Studies of children in the first two years

Most studies evaluating SGA children before 12 months have failed to find differences in developmental levels between SGA and NEW infants [19-22] (table 1) [15, 19-24]. However, a recent Brazilian study showed that SGA babies scored significantly lower on the Bayley mental and motor subscales at 6 months and that the difference increased by 12 months [15].

Pour other studies compared SGA and NEW children between 12 and 24 months, and all found deficits in the mental development of SGA children [20, 21, 23, 24], but in most cases the differences were attributed to particularly vulnerable subgroups. For instance, in a study of American toddlers, only male or African-American SGA children showed a deficit [23]. Others reported that the deficits were almost entirely found in children who had neonatal asphyxia or congenital anomalies [24], and that children with birthweights below 2,300 g were entirely responsible for the deficits in the SGA group [21]. In the remaining study, the difference between groups was only significant in those who had appropriate ponderal indices (API) at birth, indicating that the foetus may have been undernourished in early pregnancy [20].